ISACA Now: A Chat with Alan Turing
Regular visitors to GoCertify – especially those who follow our ongoing information technology (IT) history series "Who Invented the Computer?" – are amply aware that native Londoner and genius mathematician Alan Turing has been dead for decades. (His death from suicide occurred June 7, 1954, to be precise, as a result of incredibly tragic circumstances.) On the other hand, there's no reason to let a little thing like space and time stand in the way of celebrating Turing's far-reaching views on the still-timely topic of artificial intelligence (AI). As a new post to the blog of cybersecurity and IT governance professional association ISACA makes clear, science is still grappling with observations about AI that Turing first proposed 70 years ago. Guest bloggers Guy Pearce (not the actor) and Marueen Kotopski, who wrote about AI recently in ISACA Journal, imagine a conversation with Turing (using quotes from his writings) about the nature of AI. If you enjoy this appetizer, then you can click through to dive into the authors' more expansive "Algorithms and the Enterprise Governance of AI."
CompTIA: Sustainability and IT
Thanks to the still unfolding United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow, Scotland, there's a lot of chatter in IT circles about the global push to decarbonize and what IT companies and organizations can and must do to aid the cause. Over at the official blog of tech industry association CompTIA, blogger Ashley Watters gives an overview of the situation and discusses the particular goals and pain points for the IT industry. Watters highlights and describes some of the key issues to be addressed, including hardware waste, data hoarding and energy consumption – not least of which is the massive amounts of power use associated with cryptocurrency – and finite natural resources required to create certain technology components. If you're aware of the problem, but not sure what's actually at stake, then this is a good place to get started.
Do Certified IT Professionals Have Academic Degrees?
There's a great deal of discussion in IT certification circles about whether IT certifications or academic degrees are more valuable to the professional pursuit of IT. The topic is often presented as an either/or proposition, with commentators typically choosing and arguing the merits of one side above the other. One point that's often overlooked is that many, if not most, working IT professionals benefit from having completed both academic degrees and IT certifications. As noted in a new post to CertMag.com, the official website of Certification Magazine, 85 percent of certified IT professionals who participated in the magazine's most recent annual Salary Survey hold some level of college or university degree. Indeed, for 74 percent of survey participants from the United States, it's either a bachelor's degree (40 percent of respondents) or a master's degree (33.6 percent). It's a point worth remembering the next time that you're around a certs vs. degrees discussion. As GoCertify's Ed Tittel has opined before, both can contribute to career success.
(ISC)2 Announces Topics for New Entry-Level Certification Exam
Cybersecurity professional association (ISC)2 has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in cybersecurity certification. The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification is a pillar of cybersecurity certification realm, and (ISC)2's cloud security credential, Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) has come to dominate the cloud security certification scene in recent years. Now (ISC)2 is pulling an entirely new cert out of its bag of tricks, preparing to launch a new certification for entry-level cybersecurity workers. That credential has not been named yet, but the five knowledge domains for its in-development exam have been announced. The new exam will test knowledge of the following five domains: Security Principles; Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR), and Incident Response Concepts; Access Control Concepts; Network Security; and Security Operations. It looks a bit like they may have squeezed three domains into a single heading with the second entry on that list, so maybe we should be talking about the eight exam domains. Participation in the pilot program for the new cert is encouraged, with recruitment unfolding online.
That's all for this edition of Certification Watch. Please keep your certification news and tips coming to the GoCertify News Editor.
